Pet: Defense Bonus

Today's post summarizes my Beast Bazubands testing and attempts to answer the following questions:

a) Is Pet: Defense Bonus equal to Pet: DEF+10?
b) What does the Augments "Call Beast" effect do?
c) Are there any hidden effects from using the gloves?


Experiment#1: Comparing Pet: Defense effects

To form a basis for testing, I decided to pit a level 68 Wajaom Tiger (from the Wajaom Woodlands) against level 65 (72 exp) Lesser Colibris and obtained the following data:

Damage taken without items: 53-85
Damage taken with Pallas's Shield: 46-79
Damage taken with Beast Bazubands: 47-81

Notice that the shield and gloves provide a remarkably similar effect for my test Tiger; however, if a Lesser Colibri has 253 DEF at level 65, then increasing the Tiger's defense by 5% could equate to adding just over 10 DEF.

In order to differentiate between a +10 and +5% DEF bonus, I decided to test for differences using the level 1 (or -1) Rabbits outside San d'Oria. Since low-level Rabbits should have an extremely low Defense, increasing the value by 5 percent should be negligible whereas increasing it by 10 should be more profound.











While this table is not an exhaustive proof by any means, there is almost no way a +5% Defense increase on a level 1 monster could be the same as DEF+10.

Conclusion: The "Defense Bonus" should be DEF +10, similar to giving a pet the initial "Defense Bonus" trait.


Experiment#2: Testing the Augments "Call Beast" effect

Assuming the Augments "Call Beast" effect was similar for both the Monster Gloves and Beast Bazubands, I needed some way to determine a jug pet's level. To do so, I brought some Funguar Familiars to the Boyahda Tree and noted the total damage they took from a parser:



















Using ratios, I then calculated each Funguar's approximate HP, but I soon discovered a wide range of values. To better approximate the values, I decided to attack targets that could not damage my Funguars as much, and by attacking Ahriman, I could also determine whether my pets spawned at level 75.






*Indicates the same jug pet

As long as I did not include data where pets took DoT damage, I ended up with three distinct HP values to differentiate my Funguars with:

Lvl 73 (around 3030 HP).
Lvl 74 (around 3080 HP).
Lvl 75 (around 3130 HP).

Using the data above as a basis, I tested my Beast Bazubands in Besieged and found:











Conclusion: With the gloves, my Funguars were spawning 0-1 levels under the cap instead of the usual 0-2, so I believe the Beast Bazubands provide a similar effect to those found in the Monster Gloves.


Experiment#3: Revisiting the Pallas's Shield














Seven months ago, I decided to track down a Hocho for my Cooking mule, and ultimately, I was unsuccessful. However, while I was in the Temple of Uggalepih, I decided to bring Lia and Snippy along, and I might have had ulterior motives for bringing Lia.














Motives such as snapping fan-service photos before Sozu Sarberry popped. If you happen to know Sozu well, then you know just how awful its 2hr can get, and supposedly, even fire-resist gear does not help any because "Mijin Gakure" deals non-Elemental magic damage. As such, I equipped as many Damage/Magic Damage Taken items that I could find, hoping that my pet could trigger Sozu's 2hr from afar.

Sometimes it worked:




Sometimes it did not:





But you might have noticed something strange.








And I am not referring to how I replaced Snippy with Funguar Familiars.

In all the pictures above, my pets downright resisted "Mijin Gakure" whereas my NPC and I took a lot more damage on average. While there has been a picture of Pallas's shield reducing Kirin's "Astral Flow" to zero, it seems that the shield also reduces non-Elemental magic damage as well!

Conclusion: While inconclusive, the testing suggests that the Pallas's Shield also reduces magic damage to some degree.